“Wouldst thou indeed have done this justice to the name of Torquil?” said Ulrica, for we may now lay aside her assumed name of Urfried; “thou art then the true Saxon report speaks thee! for even within these accursed walls, where, as thou well sayest, guilt shrouds itself in inscrutable mystery, even there has the name of Cedric been sounded⁠—and I, wretched and degraded, have rejoiced to think that there yet breathed an avenger of our unhappy nation.⁠—I also have had my hours of vengeance⁠—I have fomented the quarrels of our foes, and heated drunken revelry into murderous broil⁠—I have seen their blood flow⁠—I have heard their dying groans!⁠—Look on me, Cedric⁠—are there not still left on this foul and faded face some traces of the features of Torquil?”

“Ask me not of them, Ulrica,” replied Cedric, in a tone of grief mixed with abhorrence; “these traces form such a resemblance as arises from the graves of the dead, when a fiend has animated the lifeless corpse.”

“Be it so,” answered Ulrica; “yet wore these fiendish features the mask of a spirit of light when they were able to set at variance the elder Front-de-Boeuf and his son Reginald! The darkness of hell should hide what followed, but revenge must lift the veil, and darkly intimate what it would raise the dead to speak aloud. Long had the smouldering fire of discord glowed between the tyrant father and his savage son⁠—long had I nursed, in secret, the unnatural hatred⁠—it blazed forth in an hour of drunken wassail, and at his own board fell my oppressor by the hand of his own son⁠—such are the secrets these vaults conceal!⁠—Rend asunder, ye accursed arches,” she added, looking up towards the roof, “and bury in your fall all who are conscious of the hideous mystery!”

“And thou, creature of guilt and misery,” said Cedric, “what became thy lot on the death of thy ravisher?”